Sunday 16:00-16:30, repeated Thursday 16:00-16:30, except first Sunday in the month when it is replaced by Book Club.

Open Book spotlights new fiction and non-fiction, picks out the best of the paperbacks, talks to authors and publishers, and unearths lost masterpieces.

This week

Sunday 29th July 2007

Vintage Twins, a new way of encouraging us to read classic books.

Vintage Twins

Mariella Frostrup talks to publisher Liz Foley and fiction editor of the Sunday Times Peter Kemp about a new publishing initiative designed to encourage readers to see the classics in a new light. Vintage Twins pairs a modern novel with an old one, based on shared themes, so Trainspotting is linked with Oliver Twist while Possession is married to Middlemarch.

Marcus Sedgwick

Novelist Marcus Sedgwick's new book was inspired by his love of Arthur Ransome's writing. In Blood Red, Snow White he recreates the period in Ransome's life when the Swallows and Amazons author was living in revolutionary Russia and was accused by all sides of spying.